Collaboration is a work concept that has been around likely since the beginning of the human race. People working together on a common project, common goal, or the like typically provides a more efficient means to get the thing done more quickly or, perhaps, allows the undertaking of a bigger task than only one person could ordinarily handle by him- or herself.
With the advent of computers and the advancement of technologies in networking and transmission bandwidth, electronic collaboration has extended this collaborative concept beyond the traditional physical collaboration or asynchronous remote collaboration. Now, people from various parts of the globe may participate in the same meeting at the same time. These electronic meeting rooms or virtual spaces are electronically defined connections between each participant of the meeting. Examples of modern electronic meeting applications are Adobe Systems Incorporated's ACROBAT® CONNECT™, WebEx Communications, Inc.'s WEBEX, and the like. In some implementations, electronic collaboration may be driven or hosted by a centralized server. In such cases, the virtual space is managed by the centralized sever, which controls the media being transmitted between the various meeting participants. The centralized server may transmit the screen shots of any visual presentations being displayed, any audio that is being transmitted, other types of data or files, or the like. The centralized server manages the collaboration or meeting, ensuring that each meeting participant views the same or similar collaborative display. If screen sharing is being used, the visual presentation and actions of the person who's screen is being shared is captured and then transmitted to the other meeting participants for each participant to see.
Such screen-sharing applications have been developed to enable one user to share the output of their computer screen with other users. Users generally pre-arrange or schedule an online meeting and invite the various participants, typically providing the participants appropriate log-in information for accessing the electronic meeting space at a pre-scheduled date and time. At the scheduled date/time the invited participants may access a given website and input their log-in information to access the electronic meeting space. Thus, the participants all access a common virtual space (e.g., an online electronic meeting space) by which they gain access to the information being shared by other participants. During the electronic meeting, a listing of the participants present in the meeting (i.e., present in the common virtual meeting space) may be presented to each of the participants. The participants may exchange information with each other during the electronic meeting, such as by exchanging chat messages or the like, within the common virtual meeting space that they are all accessing. In some instances, one participant's screen (e.g., the meeting host's screen) may be shared with the other participants via the common virtual meeting space, whereby the other participants are able to view (on their respective computer screens) information (e.g., a presentation, a document in a word processor, or the like) that is being presented on the shared screen (e.g., the host's screen).
Additional embodiments of electronic collaboration may be implemented using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. In P2P technology, there is typically no centralized server that manages the electronic meeting. Instead, each of the individual client computers of the meeting participants handles its part of the entire communication and networking needs of the collaborating group. This is typically accomplished using multiple client-side software applications which establish and maintain the communication sessions and all of the data transmission between the other clients. Again, similar material is transmitted, exchanged, and/or shared between the various meeting participants.
Electronic collaboration environments typically include whiteboard functionality, which allows all participants to be involved in editing a particular matter. Shared screens may also often allow the various users to assist in editing documents, coding, and the like. Thus, true collaboration may occur through these electronic meetings and virtual spaces in which all participants are allowed access to the same information viewable and editable through the shared, virtual space.
Another collaborative-type virtual space has been defined in modern social networking applications. Instant messaging (IM) services, which may typically be considered the precursor to more advanced social networking applications, allow people to send instant communications to a group of known “friends” or “buddies” who are also logged into the particular IM service. Services, such as AOL, L.L.C.'s AOL INSTANT MESSENGER™ (AIM), Microsoft Corporation's, MSN MESSENGER™, Yahoo, Inc.'s YAHOO® INSTANT MESSENGER™, provide virtual locations for multiple people to interact instantly and presence information about friends or buddies in a defined group. Presence information typically provides an indicator as to whether or not a person, who is in someone's friend or buddy list, is online or not. Additional features have been added to some of these IM services that allow the individual user to enter additional information with regard to what that person was doing at any given time. Thus, any connected person may be able to know when any of his or her buddies is online and available for communication and may be able to discern what that person is doing, if that person had entered such information.
Social networking applications have recently begun to advance into a more rich experience through Web applications such as Fox Interactive Media's MYSPACE.COM™, Facebook Inc.'s, FACEBOOK®, and the like. In these social networking applications, each member is able to create a homepage with videos, pictures, web log (blog) entries, and the like. Members become friends with other members allowing for shared access to information, instant messaging and other collaborative-type experiences.
Other social networking applications provide for sharing information about user activities among peer group members in certain limited contexts. As one example, members of a peer group may subscribe to a service to receive informational updates of user activities that these users have input for themselves. For instance, Obvious L.L.C.'s TWITTER™ service provides a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”) to the TWITTER™ website, via short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application. Thus, a user can send the TWITTER™ website a text-based post (up to 140 characters long) in which the user describes his or her activity. The posted updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. While delivery to everyone signed up for a given user is the default, the sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends. Users can receive the textual updates via the TWITTER™ website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through a separate application. As an example, a user may input and send (or “post”) a text message to TWITTER™ that the user has arrived at an airport, whereby the textual posting that describes the user's activity of arriving at the airport may be communicated to other subscribing users, such as the sender's friends, family, co-workers, or the like. Thus, the TWITTER™ service requires users to actively type in a textual description of their activities, and TWITTER™ provides a textual communication describing the user activity to other parties.